Studies show that a haptic keyboard improves touchscreen typing speed and input accuracy, but very few people know you can enable it on your iPhone.
Android phones years ago had haptic keyboards, but without a precision vibration motor, the feedback was too slow to make the illusion really work. With the Taptic Engine — hardware in every iPhone since the iPhone 6s that can simulate all kinds of vibrating textures — Apple created a perfectly convincing effect to enable the haptic keyboard.
Read on to see where to enable it.
How to turn on iPhone haptic keyboard
Leaving the keyboard click sounds on in public is a bit of a social faux pas, but you really do type better when you have some sort of feedback for hitting the keys. Luckily, there’s a better solution that won’t annoy everyone in the room with you. You can get that clicky feeling for your thumbs without any of the noise — it’s just as good, if not better.
It feels incredible. I turned it on years ago, and every time I type something in on a friend’s phone without it enabled, it feels broken. You can’t go back once you turn it on — it’s that great.
Enable Keyboard Feedback in Settings
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Keyboard Feedback and enable Haptic.
Tapping any key has a subtle click of haptic feedback. This might just be my imagination, but it feels like the 123 key that switches keyboards is ever-so-slightly stronger. The emoji/language switching button has no haptics at all, so you know that if your finger taps the screen without any feedback, you missed the 123 button or the spacebar.
The feature is only available on the iPhone, not the iPad. No iPad has the Taptic Engine necessary to make this work — speculation is that iPads are too big for the haptics to feel right on such a large display.
Haptics works everywhere the standard iPhone keyboard is used: in Messages, in websites and in all third-party apps. However, third-party keyboards like this extremely suspicious one I tested (don’t trust a keyboard with anything shown in the Data Used to Track You section) may not have haptic feedback.
Does using haptic keyboard affect iPhone battery life?
Apple warns that “turning on keyboard haptics might affect the battery life of your iPhone.” However, I haven’t noticed any difference. In a similar vein, turning mute off also affects the battery life simply because the speakers need power to make noises. I wouldn’t worry about it.
Bottom line: I love this feature. It took a long time to get it, but better late than never. This is added to my list of suggestions I give to everybody. Just like switching to List view on the Apple Watch.
More iPhone pro tips
- Create Focus modes to customize notification settings for different times of day, like work, vacation, driving, personal time and more.
- Reset your iPhone with your old passcode — for up to three days later — if you forget your new one.
- Customize the Action button to toggle the flashlight, open the camera, run a custom shortcut and more.
- Hide and lock apps with Face ID (or Touch ID) so they can’t be opened (or seen on your phone) by anyone else.
- Play ambient music and background sounds while you work for distraction-free tunes and vibes.
This article on the iPhone haptic keyboard was originally published on September 20, 2022. We updated it with the latest information on October 23, 2024, and March 10, 2026.
D. Griffin Jones is a writer, podcaster and video producer for Cult of Mac. Griffin has been a passionate computer enthusiast since 2002, when he got his first PC — but since getting a Mac in 2008, he hasn’t turned back. His skills in graphic and web design, along with video and podcast editing, are self-taught over 20+ years. Griffin has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and has written several (unpublished) apps for Mac and iOS. His collection of old computers is made up of 40+ desktops, laptops, PDAs and devices, dating back to the early ’80s. He brings all of these creative and technical skills, along with a deep knowledge of Apple history, into his work for Cult of Mac.
